Reuters: FCC could consider more conditions for XM-Sirius deal
WASHINGTON, July 11 (Reuters) - The chairman of the Federal Communications Commission said on Friday he would consider proposing further conditions on Sirius Satellite Radio Inc's (SIRI.O: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) acquisition of XM Satellite Radio (XMSR.O: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) if it were needed to win support of other FCC commissioners.
"They (FCC commissioners) need to figure out what it is that they want and propose it," FCC Chairman Kevin Martin said at a press briefing. (Reporting by Peter Kaplan; editing by Jeffrey Benkoe)

I think the Martin McDowell votes are in, but Tate won't come aboard until we get further concessions from SIRI/XMSR and I don't think its going to be spectrum based.

Something HD related? Some sort of middle ground?

Oh god let's hope not.

I think the open device solves this, heres what they should do:

Sirius should not be allowed to prevent manufactures from building radios that have HD Radio + Sirius Radios, so if a manufacturer wants to make a HD Radio that has Sirius radio, they can without Sirius being able to say no.

I think that Karmazin should state that he is in favor of adding HD chips to the Satellite Radios under the following conditions:
HD pays for the chips
HD pays for their portion of product development
And HD station pays RIAA for royalty rights for anythign broadcast on HD.

I think that Karmazin should state that he is in favor of adding HD chips to the Satellite Radios under the following conditions:
HD pays for the chips
HD pays for their portion of product development
And HD station pays RIAA for royalty rights for anythign broadcast on HD.

That should solve the problem...

I can agree with that. Though they still get lots of free money from congress.

my problem with that is hd sucks...why would I want to diminish the quality of a radio unit perceived to be a sirius radio, by screwing it up with a crappy add-on?

It's no crappier than an FM tuner being included.

I think its a better idea to move away from branded satellite radios, and just have it be an integration into radios in general. Let other people design it, make it aesthetically pleasing, and the satellite company will give them access to the technology to implement it. Let us concentrate on what we do best, high quality, interesting programming.

In essence that what the open device radios will do except for one key and i revere to the Nintendo Licenceing program pretty much back from the 1980's

To keep quality control up Nintendo licence the games, in essence the Open Device status that is currently on the books is the nintendo licence, Nintendo doesn't control the content in the game (only ever happend one time a game was rejected based on content (mortal kombat when it first came out had green insted of red blood) (Example being HD Chips) they only licence the game for use for there system if it doesn't harm/damage the console or the product.

another example is Coke, there are coke distributers everywhere but they have to be approved by the company to have a set quality control before they can make and bottle it.

Other than the obvious cost increase by adding HD -- and the issue with having commercial channels be a part of satellite radio... one concern I would have, if I were one of the DARS companies, is the audio quality issue.

The HDC codec is a much higher quality codec than both Sirius' PAC and XM's use of AAC+. HDRadio is currently compressed to just 48kbps at most, while Sirius and XM are both significantly more compressed. I have both XM and HDRadio -- there is a night & day difference between the two. An average listener will be able to discern a difference when switching between the two.